​I celebrated the new year by coming up with a working title for my third book … read to the end to find out what it is!

Much to my surprise, my third book is turning out NOT to be an Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel! I have a start on Ann Kinnear Book 3 (stay tuned for more news on that front), but I had another story rattling around in my head. The main character in this story, like Ann, has an extraordinary ability but, unlike Ann, it is one that poses a danger to others. Being a fan of Shakespeare (Google “the sense of death” and “the sense of reckoning”), the working title I gave the book was “A Furnace for Your Foe.” (Not one that trips off the tongue but, hey, it gave me something to name the file.)

One evening over dinner with Wade and a friend, I gave them an overview of the plot. Our friend suggested I read one of Stephen King’s novels … yup, I had just written a synopsis of Firestarter. (My main character even had a name similar to King’s main character.) I must have read Firestarter a couple of decades ago, because every once in a while I would encounter a passage that seemed familiar—the plot as a whole felt new to me, but there must have been a brain cell storing the details. Hey, if you’re going to subconsciously plagiarize, Stephen King is a good source to choose!

So I reworked the story—among other changes, giving the main character a different skill than firestarting (and a different name). It’s coming along nicely—I already have 23,000 drafty words. (The Sense of Death and The Sense of Reckoning were each about 80,000—I think this one is going to end up being quite a bit longer.)

And I have the working title: A Mind Diseased.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;Raze out the written troubles of the brain;And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuffWhich weighs upon the heart?